T&T's se­nior men's foot­ball team fell to an 85th minute goal and was even­tu­al­ly beat­en 1-0 by host Cu­ra­cao in a friend­ly in­ter­na­tion­al match on Fri­day night at the Sen­tro De­porti­vo Ko­r­sou in Willem­stad, Cu­ra­cao.The match was played on a new­ly in­stalled ar­ti­fi­cial turf as the hosts pulled off the moral boost­ing win they were hop­ing for ahead of their up­com­ing 2018 World Cup at home to Cu­ba on Wednes­day.

T&T, miss­ing sev­er­al of its reg­u­lar over­seas-based pro­fes­sion­als, man­aged to cre­ate a few good scor­ing chances but failed to put away any against a Cu­ra­cao team full of sea­soned Eu­ro­pean-based play­ers.

Among those in their start­ing eleven was goal­keep­er Eloy Room of Dutch Pre­mier Di­vi­sion club FC Twente, for­ward Fe­lit­ciano Zschuss­chen and de­fend­ers Dar­ryl Lach­man and Rhuend­ly Mar­ti­na all of FC Twente, Ri­hairo Meu­lens of Ro­man­ian club Rapid Bu­curesti, Cyprus-based de­fend­er Dust­ley Mul­der and for­ward Gi­an­lu­ca Maria who plays for Dutch Sec­ond Di­vi­sion club RKC Waal­wijk, mid­field­er Je­re­my de Nooi­jer of Dutch Sec­ond Di­vi­sion club Spar­ta Rot­ter­dam and Dan­ish-based for­ward El­son Hooi.

Miss­ing from the T&T line up was Cen­tral FC mid­field­er Ataulla Guer­ra who sus­tained an an­kle in­jury in train­ing on Thurs­day evening. This was al­so T&T's first en­counter with­out in­jured Or­lan­do City mid­field­er Kevin Moli­no while Chica­go Fire's Jo­evin Jones, Eng­lish-based de­fend­er Justin Hoyte and Eu­ro­pean-based trio Lester Pelti­er, Aubrey David and Shel­don Bateau were all ex­cused from the match by head coach Stephen Hart.

T&T head coach did not of­fer any ex­cus­es af­ter the de­feat."This game will serve us well. We had some good mo­ments but con­cen­tra­tion needs to be bet­ter de­fen­sive­ly, es­pe­cial­ly in the mid­field, over nine­ty min­utes," Hart said af­ter the match."Cu­ra­cao de­serve cred­it. They played the game with a pas­sion and de­sire wor­thy of a World Cup qual­i­fi­er which they play on Wednes­day against Cu­ba," Hart said.

Hart stressed that T&T's play­ers need­ed to im­prove their men­tal state for in­ter­na­tion­al match­es re­gard­less of the op­po­nent or the oc­ca­sion."The days for T&T just show­ing up in CON­CA­CAF or the Caribbean and ex­pect­ing the re­sult to go in its favour be­cause of his­to­ry or name, are over. We need to play with a de­sire and a will to dom­i­nate, con­trol the tem­po of the game, de­fend in­tel­li­gent­ly and win.

"Hav­ing said that, we had three days to­geth­er and as I said, this game will serve as a les­son as to what each in­ter­na­tion­al game de­mands of us an in­di­vid­u­als and as a unit," Hart said.

On the field, T&T had the first chance at goal when Jones head­ed just over bar af­ter be­ing picked out by debu­tant Kay­dion Gabriel. It was a chance that should have been put away to set­tle the vis­i­tors ear­ly. On 19 min­utes Jones turned pro­vid­ed when he head­ed in­to the path of Ker­ron Cum­mings but his shot went wide of the mark. Cum­mings was mak­ing his first in­ter­na­tion­al ap­pear­ance since 2010.

Cu­ra­cao got in­to stride and had their first try at goal in the 25th minute. Fol­low­ing the break, T&T con­tin­ued to cre­ate chances but couldn't hit the tar­get. Debu­tant Kadeem Corbin muffed a cou­ple good at­tempts and sub­sti­tute De­vorn Jorsling and Dwayne James al­so squan­dered fur­ther op­por­tu­ni­ties to put T&T on the score­sheet.

Sub­sti­tute Charl­ton Vi­cen­to even­tu­al­ly gave the home fans much to cheer when he con­vert­ed five min­utes from full time for the win­ning goal, giv­ing for­mer Hol­land and Barcelona play­er Patrick Kluiv­ert his first ma­jor win on the in­ter­na­tion­al stage since tak­ing helm of the Cu­ra­cao team ear­li­er this year.

T&T will re­main in Willem­stad for a cou­ple days more where they will con­tin­ue to train be­fore re­turn­ing home next week. This coun­try's next in­ter­na­tion­al friend­ly is away to Jor­dan on June 16th. T&T will open its CON­CA­CAF Gold Cup cam­paign against Guatemala on Ju­ly 9th in Chica­go and is ex­pect­ed to face Haiti in an­oth­er warm up in Mi­a­mi in ear­ly Ju­ly.

T&T Line up vs Cu­ra­cao

21. Jan-Michael Williams, 6. Daneil Cyrus, 17.Mekeil Williams, 18. Elji­ah Bel­grave (2. Shan­non Gomez 83rd), 23. Kay­dion Gabriel, 8. Khaleem Hy­land (5. Le­ston Paul 60th), 20. Keron Cum­mings, 14. An­dre Bou­caud (15.Dwane James 60th), 13. Shah­don Win­ches­ter (19.Kadeem Corbin 64th) 9. Ken­wyne Jones (capt) (16. De­vorn Jorsling 64th), 12. Willis Plaza.

Subs not used � 1. Mar­vin Phillip 7. Sean De Sil­va, 11. Ataulla Guer­ra